Good choice!
Written: Dec 28 '02
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Pros: solid performer, great display, stylish design, many more
Cons: "tin sounding" speakers, wireless support missing, gets pretty hot!
The Bottom Line: If you're looking for a fast, reasonably priced (mine did have a $100 rebate), and attractive notebook computer, this would be a good model to investigate.
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| aacampbe's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Pavilion ze1250 (F5400H) PC Notebo... |
I've been using the HP Pavilion ze1250 for about two months now. I based my decision to buy this model on the fact that I'm a big fan of the AMD chips, there were plenty of features, and it just looked cool. In fact, the looks are probably what you'll notice first. The silver and black design along with the blue backlit buttons and indicator lights are very attractive, but there's more to the ze1250 than its looks.
The AMD Mobile Athlon XP 1800 is very zippy. Unfortunately, early versions of Windows XP don't support the Athlon's PowerNow technology, so you may want to get Service Pack 1 for XP. This model also includes a 30 GB hard drive, USB, modem and networking (not wireless though), firewire, and a very cool DVD/CD-RW combo drive. Throw in 512 MB of memory and you have yourself a nice system.
If the ze1250 has a weakness, it's probably the tin can speakers built-in to this unit. HP ships some similarly equipt models with Polk Audio speakers, so look around if sound is important to you. The side access headphone jack has gotten quite a bit of use and works well (especially when watching DVDs).
The ze1250's video is adequate. Video is supplied by the S3 (Via) Twister-k chip powered by system memory (up to 32 MB). If you're into 3D gaming, performance may not be adequate at the full 1074x768 default resolution in some games. I haven't experienced many problems, but I'm just a casual gamer. I don't have any problem at all though with the 15 inch LCD display . It's bright, clear, and beautiful.
One other point I'd like to make. This model gets pretty warm. Power management helps a great deal, but if you use your laptop on your lap, consider buying a lap desk...seriously.
Performance is very good. I have done sound and video editing, desktop publishing, watched a bunch of movies. Everything works and works well. No surprises!
I hope this review has helped. I have not been disappointed with mine.
P.S. I also run Mandrake Linux on this machine. It works well.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1399.
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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aacampbe
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Reviews written: 3
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